More Myths

Okay a few more myths about the Israel/Palestinian conflict
“Palestinians are anti-Semitic by nature.”
People like to claim that the real reason that Palestinians attack Israel and its citizens is because of a deep-rooted hatred for Jews. People will point to this fact over and over. “In 1937 the Grand Mufti expressed his solidarity with Germany, asking the Nazi Third Reich to oppose establishment of a Jewish state, stop Jewish immigration to Palestine, and provide arms to the Arab population.” Of course, there is truth to that but how does that tell us anything about the Palestinians today? To me it is irrelevant.
As Prof. Finkelstein likes to point out, Did the Native Americans fight the European settlers because of deep rooted anti-Europeanism? It would be laughable to claim that was the reason.

“These people have been fighting for thousands of years or this is a religious war”
At first the obvious truth is that the Jews weren’t in Palestine for the last couple thousand years. The Romans had kicked them out, in the first century and they didn’t start returning, in any real numbers, until the early 1900’s. These early Zionists had actually hoped to live in peace with their Arab neighbors and share the land and did.
Religion does play a role in the conflict but it isn’t a main factor. Suicide bombing mostly occurs in places on the globe were people feel that their religion is being attacked by another or when people are being ruled by another religious group. The fact is that the majority of all suicide bombing have occurred in Sri Lanka by the more secular Tamil Tigers. This group is not a highly religious organization but they are the minority religion in their land and have no rule.
In addition all one needs to do is go back and reread the latest Bertrand Russell quotes.

“The Palestinians left, in 1948, either as a result of their Arabs leaders telling them to or under their volition.”
There was no Arab leader to tell the Palestinians to leave.
Right-wing Israel Historian Benny Morris has shown that the Israelis ethnically cleansed the Palestinians from the West Bank. His only complaint is that it was done well enough.
Not to mention, I would have gotten the hell out too after this.

“The Arabs are/were going to ‘Push the Jews into the Sea’”
Israel has always had military superiority to all its adversaries combined.

“There is a lot of controversy about the conflict.”
Actually pretty much the entire world in is agreement about the conflict, the solutions, the history, what is happening, what is legal under international law and who are the victims. The only controversy is coming from Israel and the U.S. In fact there doesn’t seem to be any controversy in Israel if one reads the Israeli papers.

That is all I can think of off the top of my head.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to tackle one of the biggest myths of all; “At Camp David in 2000, Ehud Barack, Israel’s Prime Minister at the time, made a generous offer, with huge concessions, to Arafat but Arafat just rejected it and started the Second Intifada (uprising in Arabic).”